


Towards A New Anthropology (or, The Care and Feeding of Particle Physicists)

by branwyn



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Child Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Romantic Friendship, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce lets Tony into his life. The next thing he knows, he's being fed, sheltered, groomed, and...studied. In unsettling yet disturbingly pleasant ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. socialization

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chess_ka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chess_ka/gifts).



> This is my first time writing in this fandom, and my knowledge of Marvel is strictly confined to the events of the movies. Warnings, rating and tags are subject to change with later chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited June 2016.

Bruce isn't doing much of anything when Tony comes to find him--just standing on the sidewalk outside a restaurant, fishing for something in his pockets. That doesn't stop Tony from looking him up and down with this incredulous expression, like Bruce has just confessed to believing in intelligent design or something.

"Didn't peg you for a smoker," Tony says. "That's weird, a vegetarian and a smoker. Not judging though, you're complicated, I like complicated."

"Uh, thanks," Bruce says.

"Need a light? I don't have one. I could make one? I mean, I could make fire." His gaze comes to settles on a heap of garbage next to an overturned trash can. Bruce has to concede that it would probably be a good source of fuel.

"I don't need a light," says Bruce. "I don't smoke."

"Oh." Tony looks slightly disappointed. "Why not? I mean, you might as well."

"Just because it won't kill me doesn't mean it isn't disgusting."

"Yeah, okay, fair enough." Tony's watching him with that same puzzled look he wore on the helicarrier. "So then what are you--why are we out here?"

"I don't know why you're out here." Bruce says, trying to be patient. 

Steve and the others are still inside, picking at their third helping of spiced meat and soft bread. Bruce had excused himself quietly and headed for the door, because the restaurant was almost empty and yet very full of noise: the little tinkling sounds of cutlery brushing against plates, the shush of the teenage boy's broom against the floor, Thor's hearty grunts of appreciation for his mighty repast. 

All of those little noises had grated at the delicate sense of calm that envelopes Bruce after a fight, just before the dread of _how-long-till-next-time_ begins to tug at his insides. So he'd stepped outside for a moment; but the city was far too quiet, and it wasn't as soothing as he'd hoped. 

He hadn't even noticed Tony coming after him. One moment he was staring up into the narrow strip of sky visible between the skyscrapers, and the next, Tony was standing at his elbow. Hovering, you might call it, except when the man in question possesses robotic armor equipped with repulsor technology, words like "hovering" acquire a literal significance that makes metaphors confusing.

"I followed you," says Tony, like there's nothing weird about that. 

"Did you need me for something?"

"Just making sure you're not sneaking out on the bill."

"You already paid the bill." 

"And you already sneaked out on me once."

Bruce almost laughs, almost chokes on it. You could accuse the Hulk of plenty of stuff, but he didn't really have the capacity to _sneak_.

"I just needed some air," he says, because it's easier than wondering where the faintly hurt noise in Tony's voice comes from. It's a put on, but Bruce has already figured out that most of Tony's put-ons are distant cousins of something real that he's trying to hide. They've barely known each other for a full day. An extraordinary day, granted, but surely it's a little soon for anyone to have expectations of him.

Bruce's hand closes on the little plastic bottle in his pocket. He'd seen a pile of them lying in the street rubble surrounding an overturned vendor's cart. He pulls it out and unscrews the cap, aware that Tony is watching him closely. Like he might be holding some kind of magic smoke, the prelude to a disappearing act. Tony is watching him, and Bruce doesn't get why Tony would care if he disappeared. He's _Tony Stark_. There's only one unique thing about Bruce, and not even Tony could hold onto the Hulk for any length of time. People had tried.

He doesn't want to think about what Tony Stark might want with the Hulk, so he holds up the bottle and pulls out the plastic wand inside. There's a ring at the end, like a tiny magnifying glass. A drop of clear liquid drips down the stem onto Bruce's fingers.

Tony's face screws up, his expression suspicious. "Is that--"

Bruce takes a deep breath, puckers his lips, and lifts the wand to his mouth. He exhales steadily through the plastic ring. A cloud of soap bubbles bursts into the air between them. 

It's not on purpose that most of them end up in Tony's face--that's just the direction the breeze is blowing.

Okay, maybe it's a little on purpose.

"The fuck--?" Tony bats at his face, like he's fending off a swarm of gnats. He recoils, outraged, when a bubbles pops on his eyelashes. "What are you doing, what is this?"

"Soap molecules have hydrophilic and hydrophobic hydrocarbon tails," says Bruce in a gentle voice, "and when you blow on them--"

"Why are you blowing bubbles? Where the fuck did you even--Banner, did you steal this off a kid?"

"I stole it." Bruce shrugs. "There weren't any kids."

The muscles around Tony's mouth are twitching. "You're telling me you came out here in the middle of dinner so you could blow bubbles in my face."

"I came outside because I wanted to be outside," says Bruce. Tony is a spoiled brat, used to poking but not being poked. Watching his agitation is sort of therapeutic, like watching the glitter settle in a snow globe.

"You made bubbles happen," says Tony sternly. "With your mouth. In my face."

"Would you rather have a face full of secondhand smoke?"

"Uh, duh."

Bruce dips the wand back into the soap solution. Tony says, "So help me, Banner, if you blow that shit in my face again--"

"Hey, just don't stand downwind." 

"I'm standing where I'm standing, why don't you point that thing--Jesus!"

Tony flinches as Bruce tilts his head back and blows a stream of bubbles upward. The sun highlights the iridescent roil of the soap mixture. It reminds Bruce of the sheen on pigeons' feathers. 

He likes pigeons. He's aware that this makes him a freak.

"Bruce." Tony sounds like he's begging, which is funny enough to make Bruce look at him for a second. "I dunno if you noticed, but we're famous now. We've got a reputation to uphold."

"Reputation?" Bruce's academic reputation is nonexistent after so many years. The other guy's reputation has been pretty secure since he broke Harlem.

"As superheroes, Banner. Keep up. You don't know who's filming us right now. You're not gonna strike fear into the hearts of our enemies when a video hits YouTube with you blowing bubbles on the street corner like some kind of adorable urchin."

The train of Bruce's thoughts derails. He looks down at himself, at his dusty feet and untrimmed toenails, the hole in the knee of his borrowed pants. "Urchin," he says. He would question the _adorable_ , but he doesn't have the nerve.

"Yeah, have you seen yourself? You're all rumpled and tousled. Like Little Orphan Annie, or the poor little matchstick girl."

Bruce wonders if Tony knows that he is actually an orphan. "Match, not matchstick."

"Yeah, English lit wasn't my major."

"Stephen Crane was an American writer."

"It's hot that you know that. Useless, but hot."

Bruce is pretty sure that Tony is undressing him with eyes, though Bruce can't tell if he's thinking about sex or if he's mentally dragging Bruce to an appointment with his tailor. "Sorry if I'm not appareled to your standards," he says. "No room for a travel iron in my luggage."

"Your rucksack?"

"Duffle bag."

"Hobo bag."

"Sure."

Tony bobs impatiently on his heels. "Explain the bubbles, Banner."

The wand is dripping soap onto Bruce's fingers. He wipes them on his pants, ignoring Tony's wince. It's natural for someone with a brain like Tony's to be curious about everything. He can talk about this; it'll be fine. 

"I used to smoke," he says. "When I was a kid."

"Huh." Tony looks impressed, which is just wrong, except that Tony was probably learning to mix martinis around the age Bruce was lighting up for the first time. "Wouldn't have pegged you for the rebellious teenager type."

Bruce doesn't laugh at him. Tony might ask questions, and Bruce would be tempted to answer them. He's lived anonymously for too long; there's a part of him now that wants to be known. 

"I wasn't a teenager." It had been after his mother was murdered. "I was 12."

"Huh."

"I stopped eventually." Mostly because he didn't have the spending money once his dad's stash ran out. Bumming smokes off the older kids at the foster home would have involved a level of social skill he's never possessed. "Later, sometimes, I'd get the urge, but it wasn't really the nicotine I wanted."

Tony peers at him for a second, processing this. His eyes are particularly keen and bright when he's working out puzzles, Bruce has noticed. 

When he makes an "a-ha!" face and points at Bruce, there's such certainty, such confidence in his expression that Bruce wants to back away from him. He hadn't meant to…reveal anything. That's the trouble with appealing to Tony Stark's curiosity. It's not a tame beast.

"You wanted the out," Tony says. "Way to leave the room without it being awkward. No one buys the 'breath of fresh air' excuse, but you show 'em a bad habit and they believe you. I'm right, aren't I?"

"Yes." He is frighteningly on point, so Bruce tells him more, to distract him. "A friend of mine got me one of those bubble pipes. Just as a joke." It was Betty, but he's not giving Tony her name; he can't afford to bait that curiosity more than he has to. "I actually used it a few times. I think it was…the breathing. Deep inhalations. It was relaxing. Like a cigarette without the poison." He shrugs again. "The bubbles are pretty."

Tony smiles at him, slow and relaxed. Bruce isn't sure how to read his expression, there are too many layers--doubt, delight, and speculation, mixed with something open, almost tender. 

Four days ago, Bruce had planned to spend the rest of his life pouring himself into work--in Kolkata, for as long as it could hold him, then wherever else he ended up. Steve seemed to have the idea that Bruce was some kind of missionary or foreign aid worker, but he wasn't; he was earning a living off the books, in a place where nothing reminded him of the past.

Now he's in Manhattan, having a friendly conversation in English with a man similar enough to him in age and education to be considered a peer, and for a dizzying second, Bruce realizes that this could be his new normal. He could have this for awhile. He's starting to suspect that Tony might want to give it to him.

He should never have come back to this country.

"Give it here," Tony says.

"I'm sorry?"

"You should be. C'mon, gimme." Tony holds his hand out. For a breathless moment, Bruce thinks that Tony wants his hand, and he feels lightheaded when he realize that Tony just wants the bubbles. 

He hands the bottle over, and Tony unscrews the cap delicately, like the bubble mixture contains sulfuric acid and not dishwashing detergent. He extracts the wand and sucks air into his cheeks, then huffs out. 

The soapy film in the wand tip bursts with a wet plop.

"Um. You have to blow gently." Tony looks insulted, possibly even hurt, which is completely insane and tells Bruce more than he wanted to know about just how vulnerable Tony is to even the tiniest of rejections. "It's not like you're blowing up a balloon." _Didn't you ever do this as a kid_ , he almost says, then stops himself. 

Tony screws his face up. He's concentrating so hard, he could be doing surgery. This time, the bubbles fly up and out, and Bruce doesn't bother batting away the ones that land on his face. He just lets them pop. They leave a faint, damp sensation on his cheek, like a lingering kiss. 

Tony beams. Bruce takes off his glasses and wipes on them on his shirt. When he puts them back on he starts to congratulate Tony on a successful experiment. 

The words stick in his throat when Tony takes a deliberate step forward. 

It's not threatening. Except that Bruce has never really learned to process closeness as anything other than a threat. Not even with Betty. Of all the things Bruce ever did to hurt her, that's the part that shames him the most. Even though she'd said she understood. Even though she probably had.

"You, uh…" Tony goes still so quickly that Bruce wonders if he actually noticed his tension. He'd been careful not to clench his fists. 

Tony holds his gaze for a second, then slowly, telegraphing his movements, he lifts a hand. Bruce wonders if he's about to touch his face.

Tony's fingers light on the top of his hair. His hair is ridiculous these days, a wild springy mass that adds at least two inches to his height. Tony plucks at it, and Bruce's scalp tingles. He knows that his whole face is a question.

"There was, uh. Bubble." Tony clears his throat. "Landed in your hair."

"Right." Bruce cuts his gaze aside. He can't look at Tony this close up. There are soft lines around his eyes, stubble on his chin, faint pocks that might be shrapnel scarring on his left cheek. His face is a study in reminders that he's a man, not the airbrushed playboy from the magazines. Bruce has to look away, but he doesn't move away. 

He doesn't move at all. 

"Did you get it?" he says, when he has to say _something_ or else drop everything and just run.

"Hmm." Tony's gaze narrows, and his mouth quirks up. His fingers begin to thread the coarse locks springing from Bruce's temple, and…there's really no other word for it, he's _petting_ Bruce's hair, and Bruce has no idea what's happening. 

He should stop it, and he can't. He should want to, and he doesn't.

"Yeah," says Tony, when the tingling has traveled from Bruce's scalp, down his face, spreading like warmth through his whole body. "Yeah, you're good. Got 'em all. Had to do a thorough check, things could get lost up there, seriously."

Tony takes his hand back. He steps away, puts the appropriate personal space between them again, and Bruce is relieved. He's relieved, and he doesn't want Tony's hand back, he doesn't.

It's the first time since Betty anyone has touched him without hurting him, and part of him hates Tony for reminding him what it felt like. 

Bruce turns aside, taking his glasses off and polishing them again unnecessarily. It gives him an excuse not to meet Tony's eyes. He doesn't mind being looked at as much when there's no obligation to look back.

"So I think Steve's gonna bunk at the Tower tonight," says Tony, with an ease that would suggest to someone just overhearing them that he was picking up the thread of an ongoing conversation. "SHIELD put him in some kind of generic flatpack apartment in Brooklyn when he came off the ice, but the Tower's closer. What's left of it."

Bruce is happy to hear that. It had been so achingly obvious back on the helicarrier that Tony needed Steve to approve of him. He doesn't know what they've said to each other since then, but he doubts a man like Steve Rogers would accept Tony's hospitality if he didn't also accept Tony.

"Thor?" says Bruce, because they're making small talk now.

"Yeah, Thor's bunking over too. Strictly short-term, he's headed back to Wonderland with Antlers tomorrow morning. And Nat and Clint are gonna go do whatever spies do in their downtime. Lick their wounds. Maybe lick each other's wounds, they seem kinda tight."

"Um," says Bruce, because some of Natasha's wounds are his doing and he has no right to think about her at all.

"So I figure, that's two of my palatial guest bedrooms filled up and like, 500 still to go." Tony scratches the back of his head, which might be the closest thing to a nervous gesture Bruce has ever seen him make. "What do you say?"

"I, um." Bruce puts his glasses back on. "Sorry, what?"

Tony bounces on his heels, which doesn't actually look like a nervous gesture at all. It looks like something Tony probably does all the time, when he's not pretending to be a playboy or a superhero or anything except a lunatic engineer, which isn't actually a pretense of any kind. 

"Do you want to sleep over. Do you want to visit SI for a tour of R&D. Do you--and you don't have to answer this right away, this is a long term question unrelated to the question of where you're gonna hang your hat tonight--do you want to maybe stick around for a while? Like, indefinitely."

In Bruce's head, there is a sensation not unlike a small bomb detonating. In its wake comes a spreading white blankness, a silence that is best characterized as disbelief. It has nothing to do with whether it would be feasible, or smart, or safe to accept Tony's offer. It's simply the inability to comprehend the fact that Tony is offering.

Tony knows him. He's danced with the other guy. He's seen, at close quarters, exactly how ugly Bruce gets, and yet he's…offering.

The breeze picks up, scattering the garbage strewn on the sidewalk, wafting the smoke from a few blocks north to hang over them in a grey cloud. The breeze stirs Bruce's hair, and Bruce thinks about Tony touching him.

Every huge mistake in Bruce's life has been related to the way that he wants things--passionately, blindly, with a hunger that thinks of nothing but satisfying itself. He should not trust his desires. They make him do stupid things.

"Um. Yes." Bruce holds up his hand and hopes Tony will ignore the fact that it's obviously shaking. "To the first part. I, uh, don't really have anywhere else to go tonight, so. Thank you."

"Okay, cool, cool." Tony bounces again. "And the other thing? Promise me you'll at least think about it. Thoroughly. Take all the time you need at my luxurious Tower to decide whether you want to live indefinitely in my luxurious Tower."

Bruce smiles. "I will think about it. I won't commit to a time-frame for the decision making process."

"Awesome." Tony's claps Bruce's shoulder. Hard enough to throw him off balance, except that Tony is right there to steady him again, and that. That right there. Bruce suspects that may just be a metaphor for Tony's whole approach to interpersonal relationships. 

"Let's get the rest of the food to go," Tony's saying, and before Bruce realizes what's happening, Tony is guiding him back inside the restaurant with the others. "I wanna show you all my toys."

Bruce doesn't know what to say to that. And just like always, he doesn't really know what to do. But for the first time in possibly his whole life, he doesn't entirely resent someone making the choice for him.


	2. habitat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited June 2016.

Bruce has to give Tony credit. The degree to which he was banking on Bruce moving into the Tower for good isn't completely apparent until Bruce has been living there for a week, at which point Tony decides to redecorate his room without telling him. 

Bruce finds out about it when JARVIS stops him on his way to bed. The guest quarters he's been sleeping in are spacious, comfortable, and clean. When Bruce opens the door in the wee hours of Saturday morning, they are also empty, his things nowhere to be seen.

Bruce's skin shrieks like he's jumped into Arctic waters. Mentally, he doesn't miss a beat; he just begins processing his options, now that his life has been completely overturned again.

His strongest feeling is shame. Of course Tony is telling him to move on. Bruce has had days now to consider Tony's offer and give him an answer. He's generous, but that doesn't mean he'll let Bruce keep him dangling forever. 

Well. It could be worse, anyway. At least no one's chasing him this time. And knowing Tony, there will probably be money and supplies in his pack that weren't there before. This is nothing like Brazil, or Honduras. He's fine. Fine.

"JARVIS," says Bruce. His voice comes out sounding rough, almost choked.

"Yes, Doctor Banner?"

"Where's my, uh--I know most of this stuff wasn't mine, but I had a bag?" 

"Apologies, Doctor Banner. Mr Stark indicated that he would inform you. Your belongings have been moved to new accommodations. If you wish to follow the lights, I will guide you there."

Bruce doesn't realize how fast and shallow his breathing has become until he tries to exhale and only manages a short puff of air. It's relief; he's relieved. He really thought for a minute...

New accommodations, though. That's fine. Tony probably wants his privacy for when Pepper's in town. Or maybe it's Hulk insurance. Bruce would put a couple of floors between him and the other guy too, if he could. He'd put continents, oceans between them--but then Tony's crazy.

JARVIS uses the lighting strip in the baseboard to lead him to an elevator, which travels up one floor and opens on a small carpeted lobby. The lights guide him to the left and Bruce is just tired enough to resent the extra walk down the long corridor. Tony could have mentioned that he'd had Bruce relocated, considering they'd spent the whole day together.

The lights stop at a locked door with a biometric scanner. His last room didn't have any special security on it, which Bruce hadn't resented. It's not like he had anything to steal. But the biometric is a nice gesture, an offer of privacy, even if Bruce is positive that JARVIS can override any lock in the building.

He puts his thumb to the scanner and waits for the snick of the electronic lock releasing. The door sweeps inward with the quiet brushing sound of heavy wood against thick carpet. Overhead lights spring on at 70% brightness. 

Bruce stares up into the cold stone eyes of a god.

"JARVIS." The elephant statue is massive in its recessed shelf over the fireplace mantel. "Are you sure this is..."

"On the table to your left you will find a memo from Mr. Stark," the AI tells him.

The table indicated is some kind of dark wood--teak, maybe--and hand-carved. An antique-looking Chinese urn sits in the middle of it, and below that sits a StarkTech mp3 player plugged into speakers. 

Bruce braces himself and hits play.

_"Hey buddy, this is just a little somethin' I had the decorators whip up, thought it was better than the sardine can downstairs."_

If by "sardine can" Tony was referring to his old room, his sense of proportion was seriously skewed. 

_"Feel free to get rid of stuff or change it around. Just wanted you to feel more at home."_

Hanging on the wall above the teak table is a large tapestry woven in dark threads. A dragon glares down at him, licking the air with its tongue. Its scales glint in emerald green silk and the semi-precious stones in its eyes wink at him laughingly.

_"JARVIS can give you a tour if you want, but it's pretty basic stuff."_

Turning slowly, Bruce spots a set of three katana blades mounted on the wall over the couch. 

_"Uh, kitchen's stocked, you can give JARVIS your grocery lists and he'll add it to the delivery order. Same goes for clothes or anything else you need, though we need to hit my tailor up pretty soon."_

From where Bruce is standing, he can't even see a kitchen or a bedroom. The living room alone is the size of his entire suite downstairs.

_"Oh, last thing, if you head back out toward the elevator and turn right, there's kind of a mini lab space in the wing opposite yours."_

Bruce thinks, _I have a lab_ , and then _I have a wing_. The two sentences bounce back and forth in his head until he starts feeling dizzy.

_"Wanted to get you moved in for real sooner rather than later, so I didn't get it tricked out to the standards of the downstairs lab, but it's good for those 3 am eureka moments. Have fun, chillax, enjoy the cable porn access. Stark out."_

The recording ends, and the silence of the apartment surrounds Bruce with an air of expectation.

"Can I provide you with anything else before you retire, Doctor Banner?" JARVIS has asked Bruce the same question every night since Bruce arrive, but for the first time Bruce considers that it might be more than just politeness. He considers the range of options that are probably available to him and his brain stutters to a halt.

"I'm good. Thanks." Bruce stares at the dragon in the tapestry. He doesn't really feel tired anymore. He thinks it might have something to do with the fact that a giant green monster is gazing at him as if in challenge. There's a sleepy sort of rumble at the back of his brain, and a shiver travels down his arms.

"Down, big guy," he whispers. 

He kind of wants to sit down, but he doesn't know where. There's still plaster dust on his clothes and in his hair from one of Tony's moderate-sized explosions in the lab earlier, and he knows from years of experience of being too dusty and grubby for his surroundings that he'd just end up leaving tracks in the dark, handsome upholstery.

He takes a deep breath and goes to investigate the rest of the suite.

*

Bruce is an asshole, basically. Only an asshole could resent Tony for giving him a new apartment just because it was three in the morning and all he wanted to do was go to bed in the same place where he woke up.

It's not like years of vagrancy and deprivation have cleansed him of materialism. On the contrary, he's pathetically grateful for things like electricity and running water. He's _unbelievably_ thankful for the lack of insects. 

(When Tony had showed him his room downstairs a few days back, he'd asked if Bruce needed anything else, and Bruce had actually opened his mouth to ask for a mosquito net before he remembered. He still slaps at the phantom tickles against his bare skin of his arms. Tony notices every single time. It's embarrassing.)

At least the rest of the suite isn't as busy as the living room, though there's enough statuary in the form of household gods to furnish shrines in at least three major religions. The pan-Asian confusion continues in the bedroom, with its paper screens, paper lantern, potted bamboo and low bed. 

Bruce wonders if Tony knows that he sometimes sleeps on the floor, if he thought that providing Bruce with a bedroll and tatami mat would make a luxury out of a bad habit.\

He still isn't sure whether the katanas are for looking at, fighting, or cutting his food. 

Bruce is no judge of interior decorating. He just doesn't really…understand. There's a small room adjoining the bathroom that contains nothing but a potted bamboo tree and a yoga mat. Bruce doesn't do yoga. He'd tried once, on Betty's insistence, but he's on the far side of forty now and starting to feel it. Yes, he meditates sometimes, because he has to, like diabetics take insulin, but that's not...

Bluntly put, he doesn't have any particular affinity for the religions or cultures of the Asian countries where he'd lived and traveled. He hadn't been...taking a pilgrimage or whatever. He'd just been running.

Eventually Bruce gives up. He dims the lights and shuts his eyes and stretches out on his bedroll. 

Maybe there was some kind of cruel, expensive joke embedded in the decor. Or maybe Tony wasn't thinking about him at all. He's a rich man; Stark Tower is just a dollhouse to him. Maybe the only thing in it he cares about is the tech.

*

When Bruce wakes up the next morning, he stumbles into a small Zen garden in an alcove, thinking it's the bathroom. His feet are bare, and he spends the rest of the morning with sand stuck between his toes. 

The tea he makes for his breakfast is very good. He remembers Tony being horrified when Bruce admitted that he preferred tea to coffee, before getting a thoughtful look on his face and muttering, "Right, stimulants."

Actually, Bruce just never developed a taste for coffee. His father drank it, cheap, bitter, thin, and black, and Bruce just likes tea better. He hadn't bothered explaining, though.

There are a lot of things about himself that Bruce hasn't bothered to tell Tony. That probably means that the state of the apartment is his own fault. The decor is a reflection of the void he's projecting. 

When Bruce really thinks about it, it's obvious Tony is trying. He's really, really trying to make Bruce comfortable, to make him want to stay. Bruce is a bastard, but not enough of one to throw that in Tony's face.

If he leaves--and he still might--it won't be because there's a box of sand in his room. 

*

Tony is out of the lab and away from the Tower most of the day. Bruce suspects Pepper has managed to drag him into the office to look after whatever aspects of Stark Industries business she still needs him for. He's surprised he didn't hear Tony grumbling about it; Pepper must have ambushed him.

As Bruce works, he keeps looking up from his table to show Tony things. Only after he's done it half a dozen times does Bruce realize that he misses him.

He'd done the same thing for a few weeks after his mother died--he'd kept walking into the kitchen with her name on his lips, only to see the bare, clean counters, the cold stove top, and remember. He'd done it after he left Betty, too. That had been the last time he allowed himself to depend on another person's presence in his life. 

He doesn't know when he started depending on Tony like this. He didn't mean to. It's enough to make him panic, because he absolutely can't afford this. He cannot let his emotional stability be affected by something as unpredictable as the attention he gets from another human being. People's lives depend on Bruce maintaining a reasonable equanimity. 

It was a mistake to come here. He knew it from the start. He'd just thought he'd be strong enough to leave before it became a problem, which is the faulty logic of addicts everywhere.

By 10 pm, his eyes are too blurry to focus on the volumetric projections. He rises from the bench, ready to cut his losses, call it an early night, when he remembers the sand garden. The dragon. The katanas. And he's…in a building with literally hundreds of beds. No reason he can't just find somewhere else to crash for tonight.

There's a kitchen and a common room on the floor below the lab. The team had gathered there for breakfast the night after the battle. Bruce heads in that direction, concentrating on the promise of a cup of tea and a couch where he can pass out. If anyone finds him there he'll just claim that he fell asleep in front of the television. That's the sort of thing normal people do. It won't sound strange. It's a really comfortable couch, though Bruce doesn't think Tony keeps any other kind in the Tower--even the singed, battered sofa in the lab has the kind of cushions that suck you down and make it difficult to stand up again, the kind of springs that balance your weight perfectly. 

When Bruce dozes off, it's with his glasses dangling from his fingertips and a cup of cold chamomile sitting on the floor beside him. When he wakes up two hours after that, Tony Stark is bending over him, tapping his nose with his index finger. 

Bruce doesn't think. He snarls, instinctively, and seizes Tony by his shirt collar. 

"Whoah." Tony goes still, practically limp, and raises his hands. "Just me, Big Green."

 _That's the problem,_ Bruce doesn't say. A second later he realizes what his hands are doing. He releases Tony like the physical contact is burning him. It doesn't help to reflect that, in his natural state, he's not really capable of doing much damage to a man as close to his own size as Tony. Bruce's natural state is only ever a temporary rest between extremes.

"Sorry," he says, his voice gruff.

"It's cool." Tony doesn't look unnerved. He doesn't even back away. Possibly he's used to people almost throttling him. "Shouldn't startle people when they're sleeping, pretty sure I got that memo and just, uh. Ignored it."

"What are you doing here?" Bruce fumbles for his glasses. They aren't on the top of his head or hanging from the end of his nose, so he's at a loss until Tony hands them over. The world comes into focus through his lenses and he sees a soft, fond smile tipping up the corners of Tony's mouth.

"Should be asking you that," he says. "Don't tell me you dozed off in front of the TV. I know for a fact you don't even watch it."

It occurs to Bruce that Tony is a scientist. In the absence of a complete data set, he's trained to use empirical means to collect his own set of observations. Which is to say that Tony watches him. Bruce had apparently underestimated to what degree. 

"And I know for a fact that you sleep in the lab at least four days out of seven," Bruce says, because he's been a lab rat and his best defense against being observed is misdirection. 

"Exactly, which is how I know it's really fucking bad for your back. C'mon, spill. You waiting up for me?"

"No," says Bruce, and immediately feels like a shit when genuine disappointment flickers in Tony's eyes. "I didn't know when you'd be back."

"Yeah, Pepper keeps threatening to lock me in my office until I get through the paperwork backlog. One of these days she might actually do it, although JARVIS has instructions to infiltrate security at the office and spring me if I'm not back within 24 hours. What about you, Hulkmeister, can I count on you to bust me out?"

Bruce hates it when Tony talks to him like he and the monster are the same person. But there's an edge under Tony's joking tone that makes him pause, and think about someone other than himself for once. 

Ever since Tony brought him here, Bruce has been trying to figure out what Tony could possibly be getting out of it. Whatever he says, it's not like Tony is hurting for intellectual peers. The finest scientific minds in the world all want to work for Stark Industries, and most of them don't have a Hulk on their back.

Somehow it never occurred to Bruce before that a man who fears abduction and confinement might take comfort from having a beast on his side who can tear his way through the walls of any cage. 

"I don't know. Pepper's pretty scary." Bruce pushes himself upright and adjusts his glasses. "I'd probably let JARVIS handle it."

"Yeah, true. I try keeping 'em both happy, but man, it is not easy sometimes. At least I can threaten to rewrite JARVIS's code if he annoys me. That doesn't work on Pepper."

Bruce arches an eyebrow. "You mean you tried?"

Tony plops down on the sofa next to him. "There may have been one occasion when I suggested to Pepper that I could have her replaced with a life sized Pepper-shaped android. Turns out there's a clause in her contract that forbids me from replicating her personality or likeness in any kind of computerized form."

Tony's joking. Probably. "That's what you get for signing things without reading them."

"Yeah, it's a bad habit." Tony pokes him; it's how he announces an approaching change in subject. "You know you've got a bed, right?'

Bruce looks away. "Is it weird that I actually like sleeping on couches?"

"You got a couch too. Didn't you see your new place?"

Bruce had been hoping that he wouldn't have to have this conversation with Tony tonight. Or at all. He's fine with lying, but it's hard for him to show enthusiasm even when he really feels it. Faking enthusiasm is downright painful.

"Yeah, last night. It was, uh, pretty late though, and I was working all day, so I haven't looked around much." Bruce searches for something honest he can say. "The rooms are, uh, really remarkable. It was thoughtful of you."

Tony shrugs. "They were just sitting there empty. Might as well give you a place to hang your lab coat. You should wear one of those, by the way, it'd look good on you."

"I'll consider it," says Bruce, hoping the conversation is over.

"So you wanna give me the tour? I didn't get down to take a look before the contractors and decorators were finished."

Bruce thinks about pointing out that he'd been asleep when Tony came in, but actually he feels wide awake now. Tony has that effect on him.

"Sure," he says, and Tony beams, springing off the couch. Bruce stares at the hand he extends before realizing that he's meant to hold onto it, let it pull him up. It might be a metaphor. He might be over-thinking things. 

It's interesting that Tony hasn't seen the rooms yet. Bruce keeps quiet as they walk down to the elevator together, and he keeps a surreptitious eye on Tony's expression as the door to the suite opens.

"Well, hey," says Tony, blinking a few times. He turns in a circle, gaze darting from the dark wood furniture to the gods and monsters gazing down on them. "This has, you know, personality. That's good, right? That's what we were going for, something personal. Downstairs was basically a hotel room. This has...style."

"Yeah, the walls kinda…jump out at you." Bruce pushes his glasses up his nose. He fiddles with a bamboo leaf, then shoves his hands in his pockets. "I like the tea."

"Oh, yeah? I told 'em to stock up on the tea, that was definitely my idea." Tony walks toward the fireplace and leans in to inspect the statue of Ganesh. "This guy looks kinda fun. Elephant god. I can see that, you want something stomped, elephant's the logical way to go. Does he have an enemy, like a tiny little mouse demon that makes him pull up his skirts and run around like 'eeeeee'?" 

Bruce stares as Tony mimes something that is probably supposed to be an elephant god being afraid of a mouse demon. "I really wouldn't know," he says.

"Ooh, hey, sharp stuff." Tony spots the katanas on the wall. Predictably, he lifts the biggest one down from its supports and starts to unsheathe it. "What is this, the middle ages? I have robot armor, who needs knives?" He holds the sword out in front of him and whips it through the air with a little flourish.

Bruce takes a pointed step backwards. "Yeah, I haven't really been able to figure out what I'm supposed to do, with um…most of this stuff." He shrugs. "It's pretty."

Tony gives him a quick, sideways look. Bruce recognizes it as Tony's figuring-shit-out look.

"What it--is this sand?"

Bruce glances over. Tony has wandered toward the hallway with the zen garden and yoga room. There are still sandy footprints in the carpet from this morning.

"Yeah, uh, sorry about that. Didn't have time to clean it up. I dunno, is there a vacuum up here?"

Tony's mouth twitches. "What happened, Bruce? Didn't your mom teach you not to kick the litter out of the sandbox when you took a crap?"

The little sand garden with its rocks and its pronged rake does, in fact, look a lot like a cat box, complete with little fossilized cat turds. Bruce tries not to laugh, but then he looks at Tony. His eyes are small, crinkled up, surrounded by laugh lines. Bruce looks from him, to the sand on the carpet, to the swords on the wall, and then he gets it.

It's okay to laugh. It's okay to think that ridiculous things are ridiculous. They're just things. Tony doesn't give a crap.

"I mean, did they at least put some of that tofu sausage stuff in the fridge?" Tony hefts the katana. "You got a fireplace, you got your spits, you might as well cook out, right?"

"That's an idea," Bruce agrees. "I didn't really look in the fridge, I was sort of…afraid to."

"Why? That's where they keep the dead chickens, you know. For the sacrifices. I mean, you've got like, an altar here."

"I kind of do, don't I." Bruce adjusts his glasses again. Something tight and tense in his chest is unwinding like a spring in reverse. 

"You been down to look at the mini-lab yet?" Tony tosses the katana onto the couch. It immediately bounces off the cushions and onto the floor. Tony leaves it, because in his world, picking things up is what other people are paid to do. 

"No, not yet."

"Let's go." Tony strides for the door. "Chop chop, big guy, where are your priorities? I'm spoiling you, you got so many labs you don't know what to do with 'em anymore."

Bruce finds himself dragged along in Tony's wake, and somehow not resenting it. "Yeah, but. You like spoiling me."

He hadn't meant to say that. He'd meant to say "people", not "me." But he doesn't have time to backtrack before Tony tosses a hot, blinding grin over his shoulder.

"Now you're getting it," he says. 


	3. grazing patterns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited June 2016.

Tony takes Bruce shopping at the end of his second week in the Tower. 

Bruce has been fending Tony off for days, ignoring his pointed suggestions about fresh air, and acclimatizing himself to the city. He's busy, and even though he would never admit this, he feels safe in the Tower in a way he hasn't for a long time. Anything he needs, JARVIS will order for him, so Bruce buries himself in work and distracts Tony whenever he brings it up by talking about the stealth mode upgrade they're working on for the suit. 

It's probably manipulative of Bruce to capitalize on Tony's obvious ADHD so much, but he never pretended to be a nice guy. Anyway, Tony's happiest when he's thinking about tech.

The outing finally happens because Bruce has a bad day. Not for any special reason. He just wakes up one morning and the inside of his head is a little fuzzy, a little grey. He's tired, he's running slower than normal. His fingers are clumsy. He nicks his chin shaving. His eyes are too fuzzy to focus through the scratched lenses of his glasses. Beakers and graduated cylinders feel tiny and crushable in his hands. Frustration swells until his skin feels too tight and small for his body.

It's not a that he's in danger of an involuntary transformation. It's just that the temptation to let it all go nags at him until he starts negotiating with himself: maybe he should get in a fight, maybe he should go fuck a stranger, maybe he should just rip that smirking fucking dragon tapestry off the wall and tear it to shreds with his bare hands. 

He can't blame any of that on the other guy. He knows very well that it's just the kind of man he is. He's the kid who watched his mother die, who tried to blow up his school, who took a contract to build bombs for the army, yet somehow still tricks people into thinking he's shy and gentle and considerate, a harmless victim of scientific curiosity and circumstance.

Sometimes he thinks he created the other guy on purpose, just to force himself to stop pretending to be what he's not. 

Bruce has a series of protocols that he runs on days like this. They help a little. He makes tea in a clay pot and drinks three tiny cups of it. He meditates. Just for laughs he looks up a chant associated with his new elephant buddy, but he can't maintain the even cadence of a mantra, so he just sits with his legs folded and tries for blankness.

Eventually he goes downstairs to the big kitchen next to the common room. He doesn't have much appetite, but Steve is always hungry, and food rarely goes to waste around here. And Bruce likes to cook. He's not yet over the miracle of having as much food as he wants, whenever he wants it--food to spare, food to experiment with. He rummages through the cupboards and the huge stainless steel refrigerator, pulling out pans and pots, knives and cutting board, vegetables and spices. Tony won't touch anything Bruce makes unless it has meat in it--he says it's a matter of principle--so just to be a jerk, Bruce drains some tofu and cuts it into slices. He'll let Tony think it's chicken, at least until after he's eaten most of it.

Everything goes smoothly until he realizes there's no ginger root. There's powdered ginger in the spice rack, but he wants fresh, grated ginger, because they aren't remotely the same thing, and who the fuck buys every possible ingredient needed for a decent stir-fry _except_ for ginger? Bruce doesn't understand how anyone could forget a thing like that. He's used to herbs and spices being an unaffordable, dreamt-of luxury, but there's no obstacle here, nothing but carelessness, and it makes his toes curl with rage. 

He stares at the steaming pan of vegetables. He thinks about picking it up and hurling it into the sink, or against the wall. It's not like there would be consequences. Some invisible, well-mannered employee would be along in no time to clean it up. Or more likely Steve would, because he's helpful like that. He's completely the opposite of Bruce, who destroys things just for the pleasure of feeling them break.

Bruce grips the counter and leans forward, hanging his head. He can smell the stir-fry beginning to burn. He takes a breath and leans forward to switch the burner off.

When Tony walks into the kitchen a few minutes later, Bruce is still standing there, watching the oily mess in the pan cool into an inedible slop.

"So…hey." Whatever remark Tony had been on the verge of making (he's Tony, so there must have been something) he swallows it. "How's it going?"

The ease with which he sees through Bruce, the effort he's making to be careful, just makes Bruce want to lash out more.

He swallows hard, pushing a cutting board towards the sink. "I'm cooking. Or I was."

"Yeah? Looks tasty." Tony strolls forward, hands in his pockets, and looks at the mess strewn over the counter. He stops beside Bruce and bumps their hips together. It might be by accident. "What is it, cajun? The black stuff's on purpose, right?"

"No," says Bruce. He forces himself to un-tense, to straighten his back. He pushes his glasses up his nose. "We don't have ginger."

Tony's mouth opens, and Bruce just knows he's about to tell him it doesn't matter, they can just order something, because to Tony, this is, at the very most, another one of those tiny problems he can use money to fix. 

Suddenly, Bruce wonders what it would be like to have no problems at all except for the kind that no amount of money can solve. 

"I know a place," says Tony. His tone isn't exactly soothing, but it's firm, which is strange coming from him. Normally he never voices one idea at a time; he tosses a handful of possibilities into the air and waits to see which one lands. "Let's go."

"Go?"

"Yeah, come on, hop to it."

Bruce leans away from Tony fractionally. "I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, I know you are." Tony bounces on his feet. "Come on, no dilly-dallying, we got ginger to buy."

If Steve had told him that he knew a good place for fresh produce, Bruce would believe him, because Steve goes out every day. He talks to people on the street. He stops for lunch at tiny, no-name diners on his walk home from church. If Tony's ever been to a grocery store in his life, it was probably once, a dare, and he was probably banned from the chain afterwards.

"Tony, no offense." Bruce rubs his fist with his left hand. "Do you even know what ginger is?" 

"Yeah, she's the one who isn't Mary Anne." Tony rolls his eyes. "What do you want from me? There's a bodega a block from here, it sells tea and green shit."

Bruce smiles, despite himself. "Um. Ginger's a root, so it's…brown."

"Great, so you know what it looks like, problem solved." Before Bruce quite knows what's happening, Tony has taken him by the elbow and begun to guide him out of the room, down the corridor, toward the private elevator that, alone of all the elevators in the Tower, runs to every floor. "You need ginger. We're gonna get ginger. This is faster than getting it delivered, and you need it now, right? Can't work without the right materials."

There's still that note in Tony's voice, the one that says _we're going to figure this out, buddy, don't you worry_. Bruce doesn't like feeling managed, but he thinks that maybe he could give Tony a little credit for understanding the frustration of starting a project only to find that you're missing essential supplies.

They step inside the elevator. The doors ding shut behind them. Tony punches the button that leads to the basement parking deck, and Bruce shuts his eyes, because he always does when he's in elevators. He leans against the wall. Unlike most elevators he'd been in he can barely feel the vibrations of the cables. He only knows when the doors have opened because he smells the musty garage air of the parking deck wafting in on them.

"JARVIS," says Tony. "Perimeter check."

There's a brief pause before JARVIS responds. "If you proceed out of the parking garage through the south exit you will encounter only light pedestrian traffic."

"Check. Bogies?"

Another pause. "No hostile agents have been identified within the secure perimeter."

"Keep us updated."

"Of course, sir."

Bruce looks at Tony, who strides out of the elevator without a backward glance, like he's just expecting Bruce to follow. But Bruce wants an explanation. Surely Tony must know that. This is some kind of test, Tony's waiting to see if Bruce will resist or just fall in line.

When Tony finally notices that Bruce isn't keeping up with him he turns around looking confused. 

Bruce thrusts his hands into his pockets. "Secure perimeter?" he says.

"Yeah." Tony frowns. "There's a perimeter, and it's secure. What's the problem?"

Bruce resists the urge to bare his teeth. He reminds himself that the largest portion of his impatience has nothing to do with Tony and isn't his fault. "Secure from what?"

"From--you know. Shit that's not secure." Tony spreads his hands. "You're gonna have to talk to me, Bruce, because I'm not seeing the issue."

Bruce takes his glasses of, pinching the bridge of his nose. He still hasn't set foot out of the elevator. It's been two weeks since he was anywhere without four walls and a roof surrounding him. The breeze that stirs the linen of his shirt (a shirt Tony bought for him, made of fine, breathable cotton, perfect for summer in New York) is tinged with diesel and exhaust, the generic home stench of an American city. Every sensory organ he possesses is exposed and over-stimulated, and he hasn't even seen the sky yet.

"Has--" He gestures fruitlessly with one hand, prompting words from his own mouth. "Has anyone been, fuck." Bruce swallows tightly. "What haven't you told me?"

When he opens his eyes again, Tony is right there, so close that Bruce can see his face clear and un-blurred. Bruce jams his glasses back on quickly, tangling one leg in his hair.

"Are you talking about Ross?" says Tony.

Bruce laughs. "Uh, for starters."

"He hasn't made a move yet." Tony speaks quickly, and Bruce recognizes damage control mode when he hears it. "He's got people in the area, they're keeping an eye out, but they don't get within five blocks of the Tower. Happy's merry men are holding 'em off."

"How can you possibly--" Bruce jerks his chin down and tries to put his finger on the problem.

The problem is partly that Ross's pursuit of him is completely legal. Which means Tony's private security staff is running interference on the US army. Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal to the guy who refused to surrender the Iron Man armor to Congress, but it's a pretty big deal from where Bruce is standing.

"You didn't think that was something I should know?" he manages to say.

"I thought you--I mean, I just assumed you did." Tony shifts his weight. "No one's trying to spring anything on you, Bruce. You knew Ross was tracking you. Nat said she told you that SHIELD was keeping him off your back."

Bruce doesn't have anything to say to that, because Tony's right on both counts. "That's different from having the army camped out on your doorstep."

"Hey, do I look like I give a fuck?" Tony juts his chin out. "Ross stopped being a member of my fan club years back. He wants a piece of me for so many reasons. You barely factor into it."

Bruce shakes his head. "That's a lie."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Maybe he's a little more motivated than he was last month. Are you hearing me on the part where I don't care? Because I don't. Listen to me. Hey." 

Tony catches his shoulder, like he thinks Bruce is about to back away. Bruce doesn't remember moving, but when he looks down there's a gap between them that wasn't there before. 

"I invited you here." Tony leans into him, focused and intent. "That was a full-package deal. You ride with my posse, you get the perks." Tony drops his hand and shrugs. "You get the drawbacks too. I grew up with bodyguards. It can be a pain in the ass."

Bruce is exhausted. He shakes his head, and it's more of a tic than a negation. "You can't expect me to believe it doesn't make a difference. That's crap, Tony." He can't even articulate why. He's resting on conviction, beyond the reach of Tony's fast talk.

"So what do you want me to do?" The bite in Tony's voice shouldn't be so satisfying. Bruce is bringing Tony down to his level, making him feel helpless and frustrated. He really is a complete bastard. "You want me to act like I don't care that Ross wants to strap you to a table and play mad scientist? Maybe invite him and his boys into my _home_ so they can kidnap my friend and take him away and hurt him? C'mon, tell me, is that what you want me to do?"

Anger and fear plays over Tony's face. Bruce doesn't know what to say. It's all so complicated in his head, he doesn't understand how Tony can reduce it to terms that sound so simple, that make Bruce's objections sound so unreasonable. The only response he has is the oldest one, the one that's threatened every good thing in his life since long before the accident that created the Hulk.

 _I don't belong here_. Everything boils down to that. But he can't say so to Tony, because for once in his life he's not a prisoner. He's here because he wants to be. Tony wants him here, and he shouldn't, and Bruce should try harder to make him see that, but he can't. Because he might succeed. And then he would have to leave. 

And he doesn't want to.

The seconds pass, and Bruce keeps his gaze fixed on the ground. If he's staying, if he's going to man up and give ground for once, then he should say something. Apologize. But there's a knot in his throat that nothing can get past. 

The trouble with letting people be kind to you is that eventually you let yourself be fooled into thinking you deserve it. And once you've opened that door, you can't go back. Not when you're weak, like Bruce is weak. Not when the real reason you're angry is because you wish you'd found out what being treated like a human felt like years ago, before you became so damaged.

"Okay, we're having a thing here." Tony shifts impatiently, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He's close enough for Bruce to see the half moons of black oil that still cling under his fingernails. "Do we need to talk this out more? You're looking like you might be ready to just forget the thing happened, but if you want to talk, we can do that."

Bruce swallows again. He shakes his head. It's an insufficient answer in every way, which makes it just perfect for him, really. 

"Right, so we're good?" Tony claps his hands. "We can do this? JARVIS, how's that perimeter looking, we still clear?"

"Yes sir," says JARVIS. "Though I would no longer advise the south exit at this time, unless you wish to encounter a group of tourists disembarking the city bus. I would recommend the east exit."

"What do you say, big guy? Ready to take on the world?"

Tony steps backwards out of the elevator. He keeps his eyes on Bruce. His right hand twitches slightly, as though he'd started to reach out and thought better of it. Which, Tony's a tactile person. It's not like him to second-guess himself when it comes to personal contact. He's always stepping into Bruce's space, touching their elbows, hips, shoulders together. Bruce never thought he'd get used to it, let alone come to like it, but he hates that he's made Tony back off. 

Tony's never been afraid of the Hulk, but if Bruce keeps up like this Tony is going to end up afraid of _him_. Bruce thinks that might be safest for Tony, but it makes the selfish, needy part of him ache with loss.

Bruce walks out of the elevator, toward Tony. Immediately, the humid air of New York in summer envelopes him. There's car exhaust, and dust, and rotting garbage, and ozone from a recent rain shower. There's nothing else standing in his way.

Relief creases the laugh lines around Tony's eyes, but he doesn't say anything, just spins on one heel and starts sauntering toward the exit. Bruce lengthens his strides to catch up with him. As they draw closer to the outside world, his nerves start to jangle, but Tony pauses with his hand on the door to the staircase and gives him a quick up and down look. He sees it, of course. He sees everything, because he _looks_ for it.

Bruce is afraid he's going to ask. He's really not up for a conversation about feelings. But when Tony opens his mouth, he says, "So tell me about India."

"Um. Okay. What do you want to know?"

"Whatever. Everything."

They talk all the way to the store. 

Bruce is there and home again before he knows it.


	4. grooming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for violence, mentions of child abuse, and homophobic language.
> 
> Updated June 2016.

It's a month since the invasion and the battle, two weeks since Bruce had his little meltdown in the parking garage. Bruce now leaves the Tower on a semi-regular basis, always with someone at his side--Steve, most of the time, Nat occasionally, and Tony whenever there's food involved.

It's good for him. Despite what Tony thinks, Bruce has always isolated himself--the Hulk is just his latest and best excuse. Changing the bad habit of a lifetime, that's got to be progress.

On the other hand, there's a reason he got into that habit in the first place. Bruce is reminded of this in the worst possible way when he nearly Hulks out in front of a diner one Sunday afternoon.

He and Tony have just finished their reubens (mock reubens, in Bruce's case), and Bruce is pulling out his wallet at the cashier's register when Tony puts out a hand to stop him. Bruce takes a breath, ready to argue, but then Tony nods at the door.

"We got company," he says, and Bruce tenses, looking over.

There's a small gaggle of kids standing with their noses pressed to the window. They're pointing to Tony, chattering to each other excitedly. A few of them are clutching Iron Man masks, Avengers-themed lunch boxes. The others hold fluttering scraps of paper that have probably been fished out of garbage cans.

Tony gives them a wave, and they wave back, grinning. 

The first time this happened while they were out together, Bruce had been tense throughout the encounter. Tony, though, hadn't shown any annoyance. He'd been patient with the children, generous and kind. It really shouldn't have surprised Bruce in the slightest. But it's one thing to be free with cash when you're so wealthy as to render the concept of money meaningless. Time and privacy are scarcer commodities for a man in Tony's position, and it says something about him that he's never resentful, never harsh, even with the most awkward fans.

Still, Bruce doesn't like crowds, so he leans in toward the counter and asks the cashier, "Is there another door…?"

"Hey, what? No." Tony frowns at him before the cashier has a chance to answer. "It's fine. They're kids. Don't worry about it, it'll be fun."

"If you say so." Bruce rolls his shoulders, angling his back toward the door. A couple of the kids are pointing at him now. The other guy is the one on the lunch boxes, but Bruce's face still gets around a lot more than he's comfortable with. People are slower to recognize him, and even when they do they generally don't approach him for autographs, but the whispers make Bruce nervous. He tends to assume they're using words like "dangerous" and "monster". 

Kids are usually enthusiastic rather than hostile, but kids make Bruce nervous for completely different reasons. 

Tony signs his name to the credit slip with a flourish and pockets his card. "Relax, buddy. Watch how it's done." He claps Bruce's shoulder. Together they walk out the door, and then they're surrounded.

Sometimes Bruce forgets that Tony has been famous since long before the Avengers were a thing. But watching him work the crowd, it becomes obvious that he's an old hand at fielding the attention of the public. His relaxed but controlled manner is similar yet totally different from the I-don't-give-a-fuck way he faces off with reporters. Both postures are masks, but Bruce thinks the person Tony pretends to be for the kids is a person Tony likes better. 

(He'd probably say the person he becomes for the reporters is more authentic. Bruce isn't so sure.)

Tony gets down on one knee, at eye level with the kids. Bruce slips sideways to the edge of the circle. He's reluctant to walk off and leave Tony, but he doesn't want to be too near the center of attention. The crowd's getting bigger now; there are more children, and some adults as well. Some of them are probably parents. Others are probably using the kids as a cover for their own curiosity. 

A weedy guy in his twenties, wearing an AC/DC shirt and sporting a goatee, tries to push his way forward. A girl of eight or so, with short, spiky black hair, stumbles as people bump into her, and Tony's head snaps up. 

"You people at the back need to make some room," he says. "There are miniature humans up here. Tiny, crushable humans. Give 'em some space."

"I'm not tiny!" barks the girl, outraged.

"Sure you are. Hey, it's a good thing. Black Widow's like, five foot nothing. That's how she sneaks up on the bad guys."

Bruce smiles to himself and leans against the brick wall behind him. Tony obviously knows what he's doing. Bruce can just relax and wait for it to be over.

Or so he thinks, until a scuffle a few yards down the sidewalk draws his attention. 

It's such a small thing. He shouldn't have been able to notice it over the noise of the crowd, except that Bruce is conditioned to read danger in tiny, muffled sounds. He narrows his eyes until he spots the source of the disturbance. 

A boy, no more than five or six, is running towards them. He has dark, floppy hair, and he's wearing an oversized t-shirt. His gait is slightly off, and after a second Bruce realizes it's because he's clutching his right arm against his skinny chest.

Bruce steps away from the wall, not quite sure what draws him forward. A vague sense of warning prickles at the back of his thoughts, aroused by the strange urgency with which the boy is homing in on them.

He strains to distinguish the faint, lost sound of the child's voice. After a second, he realizes the boy is calling for Tony.

No, not Tony. He's calling for Iron Man. And he isn't holding a lunchbox or a piece of paper for Tony to sign. 

The boy looks over his shoulder, and Bruce follows his gaze. It only takes a second to spot what he's running from.

A tall, middle aged man is following him. He's not a big guy, but he's an adult, with a grown man's strength, and he's furious--the anger is palpable even at a distance.

His eyes are fixed on the child, but he darts glances from side to side, like he's checking to see if the boy has succeeded in drawing attention to himself.

Bruce looks at the man's clenched fists. He looks at the boy, who's reached the edge of the crowd now and is trying desperately to push his way through a sea of backs and elbows toward Tony. 

It isn't that the boy looks scared. If anything, it's the absence of terror, or tears, or any emotion at all, that tells Bruce the danger is real. When you're running for your life, you don't have time to be scared. You don't waste energy crying. You just run.

Bruce doesn't really think about what he does next. His feet carry him forward, and then his hand comes to settle on the boy's back. The boy jumps when Bruce touches him, but Bruce exerts a gentle pressure to guide him forward, making a hole so that they can get to Tony.

Tony blinks at them. "Dude, if you wanted an autograph, there are like a million things with my name on it lying around back home."

Bruce doesn't smile, and Tony must see something in his face, because his shoulders straight.

"Someone wants to talk to you," Bruce says. He looks down at the boy, who's staring at Tony with wide, incredulous eyes. "This is Tony. You can tell him anything."

Tony accepts a notepad that someone is thrusting at him. He grins as he signs his name, angling his body closer to Bruce's. "What's going on?" he mutters

"He's hurt."

Tony's eyes narrow. He looks at the kid, then he looks over Bruce's shoulder, just as someone pushes him roughly to one side.

"Sorry about this," says the boy's father, with a tight smile. "David, get your ass back here."

David shrinks back.

"Now! Before you make me mad!"

Some of the other kids are looking wide-eyed, like they know what it means when an adult talks to a kid that way. The little girl with spiky hair looks uncertainly at Tony, and Tony gets to his feet.

Bruce isn't sure what Tony is about to do, but there's a hot, dangerous impulse in his brain that makes him want to do it first.

Stepping neatly in front of David, Bruce bumps his chest against the man's shoulder. "You look kinda mad to me already," he says in an even voice. "Maybe that's why he ran."

The man frowns. "Who asked you?"

"No one, I'm just a nosy guy."

They stand there, caught in a face-off with no obvious solution that won't end in disaster, until Tony sticks his fingers in his mouth and lets loose an ear-splitting whistle.

"Who wants ice cream?" Tony bellows. "Everyone inside. Free ice cream, on me. Let's go."

There's an immediate stampede toward the door, until only Tony, Bruce, David, and his father are left on the sidewalk. 

Tony pulls some cash out of his pocket wallet and hands it to David. "Take this for me, buddy. Give it to the guy in the greasy apron."

The boy doesn't look to his father for approval, which confirms everything Bruce already knew. He darts inside the diner, disappearing in the crush.

"Maybe you should go with him," Tony mutters, and Bruce can see why that's a good idea. On the other hand, he's not at his most stable, and the diner is really crowded.

"Either one of you fags get near my son, I'll kill you." 

Tony snorts. "Yeah, we're the danger here."

The man turns beet-red and thrusts a finger in Tony's face. "Stay the fuck out of my way."

He starts for the diner. Tony moves fast, blocking the door, but it's Bruce who grabs the man's shoulder and shoves him back. 

And that's why it's Bruce who catches a fist to the face a second later. He doesn't see it coming, which is idiotic. He ought to have anticipated it, as well as the next blow, aimed at his stomach. He knows what bullies are like. He knows the lengths a man like this will go to in order to keep his possessions.

Bruce doubles over, gasping for air. An instant later he's on his knees, as a kick lands against his spine. His arms curl over his head protectively, just in time to keep the man's boot from shattering his cheekbone. His glasses go skittering down the pavement. 

He could end it in a second. There's a roaring in his head, a dark emerald mist flooding his vision. He could just let go, and the pain would be over, not only for him but for David. He could crush the man in one fist, listen to his ribs and spine crunch like dried leaves.

There's shouting over his head, a dull impact and a scuffle. Bruce doesn't know what's happening. He just knows that he needs to run. Fast, before the pain overwhelms him.

Bruce staggers to his feet. The world is bleary without his glasses but he can make out the shape of Tony holding the man to the ground. Two other men, probably from the crowd inside the diner, are assisting him. 

Tony shouts his name. Bruce hesitates just long enough to be sure that the situation is handled, that Tony isn't in danger. Then he starts running.

*

The Tower is only a few blocks away but he's still not sure how manages to get all the way there without collapsing. Practice, probably.

As soon as the elevator doors close, he slides down the wall, burying his face in his hands. His lungs feel too small to hold all the air he needs.

"Dr Banner, my sensors indicate that you are injured." JARVIS sounds concerned, and even in his current state Bruce feels a spark of admiration. "Can I help?"

Bruce waves a hand. He doesn't have the concentration necessary to form words. Every ounce of his energy is invested in keeping the monster down. 

It's harder when he's been face to face with other monsters. They make the other guy want to come out and play.

"Where shall I direct the elevator?" JARVIS continues, solicitous. "Captain Rogers and Agent Romanov are in the common area, if you require assistance."

His rooms may not be structurally capable of containing the Hulk, but at the very least he can put enough distance between them to give the others time to react. Just in case. 

"Take me to my floor, JARVIS," says Bruce. "Don't…don't say anything to Steve or Nat."

"I am required to alert Mr. Stark when his guests are injured or unwell." JARVIS definitely sounds disapproving now.

Bruce remembers Tony shouting his name as he staggered away. He'd heard it as though from a great distance, or from under cover of thunder and rain. 

"That's fine," he mutters. "You can tell him where I am when he gets back."

The elevator doors open a few minutes later, and the corridor leading to his room stretches before him. The elevator carriage is a small, safe space, and the hallway is long, so it takes a minute before he can force himself to crawl to his feet and get to his door.

Somehow he ends up in bed, still wearing his shoes and jacket. Everything outside his head feels very far away. He shuts his eyes and doesn't open them again until he hears soft footsteps padding across carpet. Hours might have passed, or minutes, he's not sure.

A blurry but unmistakably Tony-shaped shadow is leaning in the doorway. A moment later it detaches from the wall and comes to sit on the floor beside the bedroll. 

Tony smells of sweat and aftershave; to the animal caged in Bruce's head, he also smells of anger and fear.

"You awake?"

he asks.

"Yeah." Bruce's voice comes out rough, like he's been sleeping for hours, or crying. He sits up, feeling the burn and pull of various injured muscles. "Are you okay?"

Tony ignores the question without drawing attention to the fact that he's doing so. "So you didn't Hulk out."

"Uh, no, I didn't." Bruce laughs. "I mean, you'd kind of…know."

"I guess so." 

"I promise, there would be no guessing necessary."

"Guesswork is pretty much all I ever have to go on when it comes to you."

Bruce blinks. "I'm sorry?" he offers.

"You should be."

"Okay." 

Tony sighs. The back of his head meets the wall with a _thunk_.

Bruce has never seen Tony look like this before. It's uncomfortable to watch, and it makes him regret that he's so genuinely bad at looking after other people. He could try, but he knows from experience that he'd probably only make Tony feel worse.

"What happened to the boy?" Bruce asks. He should have asked immediately, but deep down he knows there's no need. Of course Tony took care of things. It's what he's good at.

"Cops took the dad away. He's suing me, apparently." Tony shrugs again. "Kid left with child services." 

"Right." Bruce isn't up to faking enthusiasm, but Tony is strangely sensitive at the moment, so he adds, "That's good."

"You think so?"

He really can't best that one lame affirmation, so he tries for a reasonable and measured honesty. "'Good', as a concept, isn't really applicable in a situation like this. At least he got help."

"I gave him my number. Probably shouldn't have, makes me look like some kind of creep."

When Bruce was twelve his father killed his mother, and social services placed him in a children's group home in South Bend, Ohio. The adults had been careless; not malicious, but overtired and overly simplistic. The older kids were the ones to watch out for, balancing their powerlessness by crushing the smaller children with words and blows. 

Bruce never slept through the night in the three months he lived there. He can only imagine how differently he might have felt about the world and his place in it if he'd been able to believe in heroes, or if he'd know that anyone at all had been in his corner.

"You did your best for him," Bruce says, meaning it more than he sounds like he does. "And your best is…it's pretty good, Tony."

"Thanks. That means a lot coming from you."

Tony's inflection is flat, just shy of sarcasm. Bruce squints at him.

"Are you sure you're okay? I kinda feel like you aren't okay."

"Nope, I'm peachy." Tony doesn't look at him. "So. You came back."

Bruce frowns. "Yeah, of course I did."

"I wasn't sure that's where you were headed. When you ran off."

"Oh." 

"You looked pretty bad. Probably shouldn't have been running."

"I can't really get hurt, you know."

"Bullshit."

Bruce breathes out a long quiet exhale, a sigh in disguise.

"I mean, you can do what you want. But I just…" Tony makes a frustrated noise. From the corner of his eyes Bruce sees him scrubbing his face with his hands. "I know I'm not easy to live with. But you don't talk about stuff. So I don't know if I'm messing up. Plus, and this is not a criticism, but your fight-or-flight reflex is kind of heavily geared toward flight. Which I get, I do, I just wish…I mean, it's been a long time since I wanted someone to stay this much. It's messing with me a little."

Not until Bruce feels himself go completely still does he realize that he's been rubbing his hands together. He's probably been doing it since Tony first sat down. He blinks at the opposite wall for a moment, then tries to buy a moment by feeling around for his glasses, only to remember that he'd lost them at the diner.

"Here. They're kind of dinged up." Tony pulls Bruce's glasses from his pocket. 

Bruce takes them, peering through the scratched lenses. They'll need replacing, but they'll do for the moment. "Thanks," he says, hooking the legs behind his ears.

"The thing is, I don't want to guilt you over this," Tony continues. "I know a lot of people have tried to put you in a cage. I get where the running comes from. I just don't want you to think that's gonna be me. I want you to have choices. Real ones, not just lesser evils. But I get greedy when I get attached, and I don't always notice I'm doing it. With Pepper and Rhodey, I know they're gonna tell me when I cross the line. But with you, I'm kinda worried that I'm going to do or say something wrong, and instead of just telling me to shut the fuck up, I'm gonna wake up one morning and you're not gonna be here."

The guilt-trip might not be intentional, but it's effective. Bruce feels like a manipulator, ungrateful and undeserving.

"I'm--" He can't quite bring himself to say 'happy'. He might jinx himself. "I like being here, Tony. And you haven't done anything wrong."

"Yeah, but would you tell me if I did?"

Bruce looks at the ceiling, feeling helpless. He considers for a moment. "Yeah. At this point, I think I could." He racks his brain for an assurance he can give without lying outright. "You're my friend. Probably my best friend, now. And you have more than earned my trust."

Tony looks at him. His eyes are soft and sad, and it's disturbing to see. "But you can't tell me you're going to stay, or you would have already."

"I can't say that," says Bruce. "Because I can't trust _myself_. I can't promise I'll always stay, not if I think there's a chance that my being here would put you in danger."

"What are you, my insurance adjustor?" Bruce shakes his head, but Tony just talks faster. "Pepper has a bodyguard, did you know that? She was the definition of a noncombatant when I met her, but now she's got a bodyguard, and it's because I let her in. People know she's close to me, and that puts her in danger, every day. Should I cut her off, should I freeze her out, to make her safer? Am I a shitty person because I trust her to make her own decisions about whether our relationship is worth some risk?"

"Of course not." Bruce realizes he's falling into a trap, but he doesn't have a choice. The question is genuine. If Bruce were to say, _Yes, you're selfish, you should never have let her get close,_ he'd just be echoing Tony's own doubt and fear. He's not cruel enough for that, not quite.

"Okay." Tony relaxes slightly. Bruce is afraid that he's going to spell out the logical conclusion to the parallel, and he's relieved when Tony lets him off the hook. "I'm trying here, you know. It would be cool if you'd just…give me the chance."

Bruce thought he'd been doing that. But Tony needs to hear it obviously, so he says, "I can do that."

"Good. You healed up yet?"

Bruce accepts the change of subject with relief. "I'm getting there."

"Lemme see. JARVIS, up the lights."

Bruce flinches reflexively, covering his eyes as the room brightens. Tony scoots closer to the bed, sucking the air between his teeth. "Jesus," he says softly. "You need ice."

Bruce touches his left eye, swollen and tender under his glasses. His lungs and stomach have already stopped burning. There's a dull throbbing pain in the small of his back, but that will go away too. "There's no point. It'll be gone by tonight."

"Yeah, but in the meantime you're gonna feel like shit."

"It's really not that bad." _I've had worse_ , he doesn't say.

Tony winces, like he heard what Bruce was thinking, like he'd followed the chain of memory and association behind the thought.

Bruce doesn't know what Tony knows about his childhood, but Tony's smart enough, and has access to enough information, that it's probably safest to assume he knows everything. It would explain why he looks like Bruce just kicked him.

"Maybe some ice would be good," he concedes.

"Yeah." Tony stands and walks out of the room. Bruce hears noises in the kitchen, ice cubes falling from the dispenser. He returns with a plastic bag full of ice and a tea towel to swaddle it.

"Thanks." 

"Lay back a minute."

"Um."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Just do it, macho guy."

Bruce snorts, because that's rich, coming from _Iron Man_. He leans back against against his pillow, not sure what to expect. 

Tony settles beside him on the floor. He settles the ice bag carefully against Bruce's face. When it mashes his glasses against the side of his nose, Tony takes them off, folds them, and sets them to one side.

Bruce flushes. Half his face burns hot, the other half is cold. "I can do this, you know."

"I got it."

"You really don't need to--"

"Shut up, Bruce."

"Okay."

"You know you could've flattened that guy," Tony says, a few minutes have passed and Bruce's eye is mostly numb.

Bruce closes his eyes, to keep himself from glaring. "I'd have flattened more than just the guy."

"Not Hulk. _You_. I know you can fight. That guy had no form."

Bruce starts to shake his head. Tony nudges him with the ice: _keep still_. "I like to preserve as many distinctions between me and the other guy as possible. He's the one who smashes things."

"And you're the one who volunteers to take unnecessary beatings." Tony's light touch is at odds with the tension and unhappiness in his tone. "Lemme guess, you figured if the guy gets arrested for assault, it gets him away from the kid long enough for all the dirty laundry to come out?"

For a second there's no noise in the room apart from the tinkling sound of the zen waterfall in the corner. Bruce clears his throat. "That interpretation of events gives me credit for a lot more rational thought than was actually taking place."

"I don't buy that. I think you knew exactly what you were doing." Tony increases the pressure of the ice against his eye ever so slightly. "You got blood in your hair."

"Sorry."

" _Sorry_ ," Tony mimics, in a low, dejected voice. He sounds like Eeyore. "Anyone ever told you you're a compulsive apologizer?"

Bruce ruthlessly does not permit himself to think of Betty. "It's been mentioned."

"Huh." There's a light tickling sensation along his scalp. Bruce feels Tony's fingers plunge into the mass of his hair, combing the coarse locks back from his forehead. "We gotta get you over that."

Bruce tenses under the gentle touch and light words. He of all people knows how useless apologies are. It's just, for the longest time now, they're the closest thing to reparation he's had to offer. 

When he was traveling, he'd shaped his whole life into an apology. It's Tony's fault, really, that he's got nothing but words to fall back on now.

"I'm gonna fall asleep if you keep that up," Bruce warns him, words already beginning to slur.

"You do that," Tony tells him. His hand is still in Bruce's hair. "You had a big day. I got you covered."

Bruce doesn't really know what he means by that. But when his eyes flutter open briefly a couple of hours later, in a dark room lit only by the glow of the arc reactor and the screen of Tony's tablet, he gets it.

It's nice. He doesn't deserve it, but he's getting used to it.


End file.
